The Laugh You Swallowed: Why the Funniest Version of You Is Also the Bravest

Jason Hewlett makes the case that humor is not a break from courage — it is a form of it. The funniest version of you is the one brave enough to tell the truth, risk the silence, and stay human under pressure.

In this episode we cover...
FREEDOM OF SPEECH — "The Laugh You Swallowed"
The FULL STORY: The Laugh You Swallowed: Why the Funniest Version of You Is Also the Bravest  
FROM THE NEWSFEED — “Why the World Trusts the Funny Ones”  
FAITH & HOPE — “A Time to Laugh”  
FATHER TIME — “The Last Time I Really Made Them Laugh”  
FUNNY FACTORY — “Dad Jokes Are a Survival Skill”  
FITNESS MINUTE — “Laughter Is a Workout”  


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Transcript

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There's a laugh you almost let out today. You felt it coming. The line was right there. The timing was perfect. Then you swallowed it. Yeah, too risky. Too much. Not the moment, but be serious. Be the adult. Be the professional. Be the responsible one. So the funny version of you stayed quiet and the flatter version of you took the meeting, took the dinner, took the drive home. Well, here is what I have come to believe that swallowed laugh was not weakness backing down. It was courage backing down. And because real humor is not the easy thing. This is not. Real humor is the brave thing. It takes nerve to be funny. Takes guts to risk the silence. Takes a kind of faith to stay, well, to say the true thing out loud and trust that the room can handle the truth wrapped up in a laugh. So tonight is not about being a clown, it's about being human. The funniest version of you and the bravest version of you are the same person. And most of us stopped introducing them to the people we love. Welcome to the Jason Hewlett Show. Yes, welcome to the Jason Hewlett Show. Lots of F-words around here. Faith, freedom, family, fitness, funny, farce, fatherhood. We're all we're going all over the place with this. And tonight on the show, freedom of speech, the laugh you swallowed. Why the funniest version of you is also the bravest. In the full story, we'll talk about the laugh you swallowed and why the funniest version of you is also the bravest. The title story of the episode and the private courage hiding inside the laugh most men hold back. I'm talking mostly the guys, because the women are pretty good at making things fun and like. And I appreciate that. And I hope that the men will listen tonight. So the from the news feed, why the world trusts the funny ones. The research that says humor builds trust, cohesion, resilience, and leadership effectiveness. In faith and hope, a time to laugh. We'll turn to the Old Testament and Ecclesiastes, where they put laughter on the sacred list right beside weeping and mourning. Father Time, we'll talk about the last time I really made them laugh. Aging backs, serial aisle dances, and the songs your family hates but cannot stop quoting. And then in fitness minute, laughter is a workout. The physical stress, relief power of laughter, as well as the connection between laughter and cardiomiracle, which is the sponsor of our show. It's the world's finest nitric oxide and vitamin D3 supplement. And so I'm excited to have you here today. Stay with me. This is the one about the laugh you swallowed. Evan talked about the man who handed me something when I was a kid that I didn't fully understand until I was decades into being a dad myself. Understand what he was trying to give me. Carry forward what was love, the window still open. Let's talk freedom of speech. The laugh you swallowed. Funny is not the easy version of you. We have it backwards. We think the serious version of a person is the strong one, the brave one, the grown up one. The funny version is the lightweight, the entertainer, the one who's not handling real life. And that's not true. Funny is harder than serious. Did you know that? Like, if you were to ask an actor, what's harder, to be funny or to be serious? Dramatic actor. Funny's the holy grail. Anyone can frown. Anyone can go quiet and call it depth. Anyone can let the weight of the week settle on their face and call it maturity. It takes far more courage to look at a hard moment and find the angle that gives everyone permission to breathe. So I do this for a living. I mean, I'm not a comedian. I'm not a stand-up comedian. I don't tell jokes like a normal comedian does. And I do more just funny stuff. And I'll show you some of that in just a moment. We're going to talk through it, but I'm I'm not your regular type of joke-telling guy, but I do make people laugh for a living. That's a weird thing for me to say. I'm not a comedian because I don't think I am. I'm more of an entertainer. And and and I have stood in front of more than 2,000 audiences for companies like American Express, Delta, Wells Fargo, blending leadership with comedy and music because laughter is how I open the door to the message. They wouldn't hire me if I wasn't funny because that's my signature move. That's what I do. And my I mean, my homepage of jasonhewlett.com says it plainly. That's the promise. And that actually happens. But here's the confession: the funniest version of me shows up the most easily in front of strangers. Like that's easy. It shows up the least easily in the place that matters the most. And the bravery hiding inside of a joke. Watch what a real laugh actually requires. To be funny, you have to read the room. You have to risk being misunderstood. You have to say something true enough that it lands, and you have to do it knowing it might not. For example, I do a nose wiggle with my nose. If you're listening to this as the replay on the podcast later, you may want to just watch this part of the episode. It's at the beginning. Uh, I'm gonna show you my nose wiggle. Now, I'm among humans that I have found online. I don't think there's anyone that can do this and talk at the same time. Now, I can do it slow, I can do it fast. That is not AI, that's not CGI from the old the old days of movies, but that is something that I use to make people laugh. I mostly use it to make strangers laugh. Because I but I have to still take a risk because I don't know if they're gonna laugh. In fact, the other day I did this at a restaurant, it did not go over. So then what do you do? I was like, you know, the waiter walked up and he's like, hey, what'll it be? And I was like, hey, do you have any lettuce? And he looked at me and he was like, No, we don't have any lettuce. And I was just like, Oh, okay, well, I'll get the omelet. You know, like he didn't get it, and he walked away, and everyone I was with was like, Wow, that didn't go like I thought it would. And I was like, Yeah, sometimes it doesn't. Usually I'd say, like, hey, do you have any lettuce? And they're like, Holy crap, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. Then I then I go, Do you have any carrots? So I do these dumb things that are just silly and signature moves of mine. I've been doing them forever, and I use them as in my speech and my shows as a comedy piece because who's willing to do that in front of anyone that can? I mean, there are probably people in this world that can do it, but I don't know where they are. They never shared it. Why not? Is it that weird? Yeah. I know after I've sung for an hour, and then I show all my weird faces that I do and my my my lip wave and my my eyebrows and then the nose thing. I mean, there are women that are like, I wish he wouldn't have done that, you know. And then other women that are like, wow, that's very impressive, you know. Uh, but mostly it's the guys that are like, dude, that's amazing. They love the nose wiggle, they love the the faces. So I have to be brave to even share that because there are times when people don't even know what the heck is happening and they're not sure if I'm having a a stroke or something. And they've joked about that. Like, I didn't know if you're having a seizure in front of me, and I'm like, ah, you know. So I appreciate that people don't get it because they've never seen anyone do it. But let's go back into the content of this piece because researchers who studied humor in leadership found that it's not funniness at all. It's a skill made of reading the context, knowing your intention, exercising judgment, delivering well, and reading the reaction. So when I do this, I'm I'm taking a risk by doing the nose thing. In fact, the other day I was in a meeting and I was with men and women, and they said something about there was a bad stench coming from one of the one of the rooms. And I said, I know it's disgusting, and I did my nose thing, and they all burst out laughing because they're like, Oh, he must have an extra strong sniffer because he's doing that with his nose. So that's where you read the room. So let's read the list one more time again. It's the skill of reading the context, knowing your intention, exercising judgment, delivering well, and reading the reaction. So this is not the description of a goofball, it's the description of a brave, emotionally intelligent human being who's paying full attention. So the same research found that being able to confidently and authentically express humor might cultivate followers' trust in their leaders. And this comes from PLOS one article. I love it, I love it if you want to look it up. PLOS One article says it's called The Success Elements of Humor Use and Workplace Leadership: A Proposed Framework with Cognitive Emotional Competencies. I mean, it's funny to find this stuff. I appreciate my team sending me all this this cool these cool studies. I never would have found them. This was from May of 2024. So trust. Not entertainment, but trust. The joke was never the point. The courage underneath it was, and that's what I'm really talking about when I do my funny faces. I say, Do you have the courage to share your gifts? Because if you don't, you're cheating the world of that which only you can do. And here's why men swallow the laugh. Um I mean, why do you why do so many of us go quiet? Because somewhere around the middle of life, or maybe earlier on, we got the memo. Be serious, be responsible, carry the weight, stop messing around. And slowly the funny one inside us went into storage. That hits home for me. Because when I was young, they would say, Jason, don't do that. It's too much, you're crazy, you're stupid, too funny, you're too loud. It was very rare for someone to say, Oh yeah, let that shine, man, go for it. And so the kids used to get the silly dad, and now they get the tired one. The spouse used to marry the person who made them laugh until they cried, and now they get the one updating the calendar. We didn't lose our sense of humor. We filed it under not appropriate right now, and right now became a decade. I once committed an entire stage bit to a single promise. And this section is going to be a little bit longer than usual. We'll we'll go through the others a little bit quicker, but uh, I needed to share this part in this beginning of this uh broadcast today because I grew a beard for months. Uh let's see if I have a picture here. I've if you want to see a picture of this, I was going for Moses length. I mean, that's serious, right? I brushed it out so it looked incredible. And uh I kept it a total secret as to why I did this, but it was for a stage bit that I was going to do at a very important event. I shaved my beard off, this beard, in front of over a thousand people at a Hall of Fame banquet. So we were putting people into the Hall of Fame of Speaking, which in the National Speakers Association, I'm a member of the Hall of Fame of Speaking, it's called the CPAE, and I got to be the host, which is very rare to let anyone be the host. I mean, they have one per year. I'll never get to do it again in my life, I'm sure. But I thought, you know, what'd be fun? Grow my beard out and come out on stage with this ridiculously long beard. And they had asked me to do my Elton John music and impression. And I was like, I could grow the beard out and then talk about the power of commitment and then shave it off on stage. The show producer was like, That's that's crazy if you're willing to do it. And I said, Oh yeah, it's easy. I'll shave it right off, and then I'll be clean shaven. I can do the Elton John bit. And when I did this, the crowd actually screamed because I came out on stage and I gave this monologue about commitment. And you know, when we're a speaker, we need to have that look. And when we're the when when we've committed to something, and sometimes our brand and our headshots and all the things need to look exactly like us. But what do we do when we when we're trying to create something and yet we need to change it in order to commit to the bit and create something special for our clients? That was the bit, and this is what happened. I hope you enjoy this video. Um, from the full beard, here's the picture. Here's just a snippet of me on stage and the reaction of the audience to become a member of the whole thing. Look at the position.

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Look at the system.

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Here's the shot mid-shave. If you see on the far right, you can see that all that hair hanging off. It was pretty, pretty nasty looking, really. And then I I did the rest of the bit after I shaved everything off, and then I clean shaved right off on the back of the stage, and then went on with the rest of the show. In fact, my family was so shocked to see me do this because only my wife knew this bit, along with the show producer, uh, that my my kids were like, Daddy, we've never seen you without your beard. So they asked for a picture with our family. It was kind of fun because a lot of people were like, I have never seen anyone do anything like this. People were sharing on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and saying, for those of you who didn't attend NSA but remember Jason Hewlett, you need to see this. I've followed Jason since he was at Caps. I noticed him growing the beard, but thought nothing of it. Even when it got to Mountain Man length, then to see that it was all in preparation for this, pretty incredible way to demonstrate commitment to a message. Check it out. So that was from my friend Mark Black, one of the great speakers uh from Canada, a great guy. And then Shirley Taylor, she's amazing. She said, the icing on the cake at influenced 2019, this was well seven years ago. Wow, was the fantastic Jason Hewlett started off with a very bushy beard, then he shaved it off and turned into Elton John. So, anyway, going from this to this to this, each of those pictures, right? I just obviously eventually grew back my normal beard length that I have that's very short. And yet, this was uh once-a-lifetime opportunity. I knew it would be. I called it commitment to the bit, and I wrote that it was comedy uh at its wackiest. And and uh I I I mean, truly, this was smothered in profundity, performance, and promise, and it really turned into something really special. But I'll okay, so I committed to that bit, which was a one-time shot, and nobody knew what was happening. They're like, Did you lose your mind? You have this huge beard. They didn't know that I had committed to just one funny thing. You see, like I say, I'm not doing stand-up comedy, I'm doing stuff that's just unique that other people generally wouldn't try because it's called courage. And I'll I'll commit to the bit for strangers. Oh, yeah, all the time. But let me tell you, this the braver thing is to commit to the bit at home. On a Tuesday, when I'm tired and nobody bought a ticket. And here's the part that surprised me the funniest people I know are not avoiding the hard stuff. They're the ones brave enough to walk right up to it. A comedian does not joke about the easy thing, they joke about the thing everybody's afraid to say. The laugh is the sound of relief that someone finally said it. That's courage doing a job that lecturers cannot do. You can correct a teenager for 20 minutes and lose them in the first 30 seconds. Or you can find the one true, gentle, funny line that lets them laugh at themselves, and now they're actually listening. Humor is not the candy coating on the truth. Humor is the bravery that lets the truth get close enough to land. And so today I want to make a different promise than usual, not a promise to be more serious, we have enough serious. A promise to bring the funny one back to the people who fell in love with him in the first place. That is the brave version, the light version, the version who's not too important or too tired or too dignified or to be delightful in his own kitchen. Because the bravest thing a serious man can do is let himself be funny again in front of the people who already know all of his weaknesses. That's not a smaller version of leadership, that is the whole heart of it. So I'm gonna ask a couple of rhetorical questions and then we'll roll into the next piece. But when did I last let myself be genuinely funny in front of my family? What am I afraid would happen if the truth came out wrapped in a laugh? And where have I confused being serious with being strong? Or who used to get the funny version of me and now mostly gets the tired version? What's the one true thing I could say this week if I had the courage to say it gently and with a smile? I hope you think about those questions. I hope you enjoyed the segment. It's extra long, but I had to set it up in the right way. Now we're gonna go into the full story right after this. Okay, so the title of this episode is not really about a joke, it's about the moment before the joke. And the little flash where you see the line, you feel the timing, you know the room needs oxygen, you know the heaviness could break if somebody were brave enough to be human first, and then you swallow it. That's the story. Not the punchline, it's the swallowing, it's the holding back. Because swallowed laughter is rarely about not being funny. Most of the time, swallowed laughter is about fear. Fear the room will not receive it, fear that the people you love will roll their eyes, fear that you look childish, fear that the serious version of you is the only version anyone will respect. So the funny one stays backstage. I used to say also go in the drawer, bring back the funny, bring back the personality, bring back some of your youthfulness, even. That's kind of what it feels like. And the serious one walks into the kitchen, the meeting, the car, the hard conversation, and calls it leadership. But what if that's not leadership? What if the laugh you swallowed was the bravest thing you had available? I mean, I don't mean the cheap joke. I'm not talking about sarcasm. I mean, you could go there, but I I don't mean taking a shot at someone because you're too comfortable to say the uncomfortable to say the truth with love, but I mean the warm laugh, the honest laugh, the laugh that says, we're still here, we're still us. This moment is heavy, but it is not allowed to take everything. That kind of laughter is not an escape from reality, it's a way of staying in reality without letting reality turn you into a stone. And you know, I've built a career on making people laugh, making big rooms laugh. And I I do leadership insights, laugh out loud, music, comedy, impressions, entertainment that fuels leadership transformation. That's what I'm known for. But the full story is this the room that needs most your humor is not always the room with the stage. Sometimes it's the room where nobody bought a ticket, and the room where the dishes are in the sink, the room with the tired spouse, the room with the kid who does not know how to say, I miss the lighter version of you, the room where your family does not need a performance, they need proof that joy is still alive in you. That's why the funniest version of you is also the bravest. You see, there's a difference between joy and happiness, and I believe that we can find happiness in plenty of places, but uh joy is like spiritual happiness, it's a it's a deeper profundity, and I'm so grateful when I feel joy because I say, Oh wow, that's that's the spice of life. And so to make someone happy is great. I like to spread joy, I like to get people into their soul a little bit and say, This resonates with you, and this is why you're laughing, because you know it's true, and we're all this way. Because you know, being funny in public can get applause, and being funny at home can get silence. Like that's the I've had that happen quite a bit. Uh, if it can get an eye roll and get the teenager walking away, it can get the spouse saying, Not now, and you have to have enough courage not to turn that into a wound. I I remember the first time I tried a an uh a parody that I had written, which I thought was brilliant, and I sang it for my wife. I said, Hey, this is for the the sound. Of silence by Simon and Garfunkel. And I said, I think if I sang it about how quiet accountants are, and IT guys and engineers, I think that everyone will find this funny. And then I sang it for my wife, which I had always just done very light parodies of making fun of people's voices and stuff. And now I'm singing about making fun of accountants, like, Hello, darkness, my old friend. I did a corporate show again. Some crowds make me want to start drinking. Quiet accountant, silently thinking, never laughing, clapping only internally when I sing. I don't like the sound of silence. And she did not think that would work. And you know, sometimes there have been bits where I tried it and she would go, Oh, I think that that's gonna be great. And it and it turns out great. Then there are times when she'll say, I don't know if that'll work out, and she's right, and I've failed miserably. And so, like I once tried Shakira, you know, like, Oh, my hips don't lie, I don't know how I sound just like a guy, you know, and like that kind of stuff was okay, but it didn't land like I expected, and she thought it would, you know, not land either, and she was right. But then the sound of silence, that one worked, even though she was like, I don't know if people will laugh at that, and I was like, I think they will. And she said, It seems like you're kind of insulting accountants, and I was like, I kind of am, but it's the jokes with all of us. I'm not poking fun at them in a bad way. I'm saying I understand where you're coming from. So it was in the setup and the premise to make that piece work. But if I'm at home and and they don't think it's funny, then I have to have enough courage to not turn that into a wound if they say, ooh, that won't work or that's not funny. And so you just keep offering the light without demanding the laugh. And that's what this episode of the of the promise is about. Stop confusing serious with strong, stop making your family live at the version of you that survived the day but left the joy behind. The laugh you swallowed is not gone, it's waiting. And today the invitation is simple let the funny one come home. Let's transition into the news feed right after this. In the news, let's talk about why the world trusts the funny ones. Science caught up to the comedians, it says for a long time, humor got treated like the dessert of leadership. Now, if you can afford it, not the meal. The research disagrees. A large scoping review of humor and workplace leadership pulled together 40 years of studies and found that humor is tied to group cohesiveness, team performance, employee resilience and coping, and leadership effectiveness. This is from Frontiers in Psychology. That same review reports that positive humor from leaders is associated with enhanced work performance, greater work satisfaction, and better work group cohesion. And here's a line that should stop every too serious person cold. From a leadership perspective, the review says appropriate humor use may help leaders to project confidence and competence. Confidence, competence, not weakness. The funny one in the room is not being unserious, the funny one was demonstrating skill. So the bravest joke is the one about you. There's one finding I can't stop thinking about. The review describes leaders who make humorous comments about their own weaknesses, self-deprecating humor, that's my specialty, and notes it was perceived as transparent communication and was more likely to yield trust from followers. Think about what that means. The riskiest joke is not the one at someone else's expense, it's the one you admit your own flaw out loud and laugh at it first. That takes real courage. You're handing people your weak spot on purpose and trusting them not to use it against you. And the research says, and you're brave enough to do it, people trust you more, not less. It's the opposite of the armor most of us wear. I mean, we hide the flaw, polish the image, and wonder why people keep their distance, but the funny, humble, self-deprecating leader does the brave thing and gets the connection as the reward. So I'm gonna be honest because this is not a license to roast everybody you love. I mean, I'm I'm constantly making fun of my inability to be great at a lot of things. And people like that because they see that, you know, I'm I'm taking a risk and I can laugh about myself. But the same body of research is clear that aggressive humor is different, it's a different animal. So thinking about laughing about yourself is different than somebody else. It's it's linked to strain, to people wanting to leave, to worse relationships. And the newer leadership study warns that if a leader cannot judge when humor is inappropriate, it can read as a lack of cognitive and emotional control. So be careful as to how you throw out a joke with somebody. In fact, I was watching a podcast the other day, just to snippet, and it was a friend of mine was actually one of the hosts, and he's a generally very funny guy. But the way that he said something to the guest made them feel like he was making fun of them by saying, like, well, we don't want your opinion. Uh or no, he said, we don't want your questions. I'm the one asking the questions. And they were like, Oh, well, I I'm sorry. And he and he was like, No, I'm just joking with you. Well, we want to hear your questions. And so it was like that, it just didn't land in the sense it felt almost like an attack, like, stop asking questions. This is my podcast. Uh, that's a hard thing to spin. And so what I might say is something like, I could be like, Well, usually I'm the one that asks the questions, but what are your questions? You know, so that might be how I would spin it. It's not anything funny to do, it's just a matter of putting it back on myself. So the courage I'm talking about is not cruelty with a punchline. Brave humor lifts the room and it does not stand on someone's neck to get a laugh. The funniest version of you is the warm one, not the sharp one. I hope this is helpful. I hope this makes you feel like you can pull the funny out of your drawer, take it out of storage. It's been out there too long. It's okay to make it happen because guess what? Even biblically, we're told that laughter is important. Let's go into faith and hope right after this. All right, in faith and hope, we're talking about a time to laugh. Laughter actually made the list. There's a passage almost everyone has heard, even uh people who've never opened a Bible. It's in Ecclesiastes 3:1. And this is uh this is in the Old Testament. It says, For everything there's a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven. You've heard that. There's a season for all things, right? Then it starts listing the seasons of a human life: a time to be born, time to die, time to plant, time to pluck up. And right in the middle of that list it says this. You ready? Have you ever noticed this? Verse 4 of Ecclesiastes 3, verse 4, it says, A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. I want you to notice where laughter shows up in there. It's not often a corner labeled optional. It's not filed under once the serious things are handled, no, it's right there on a sacred list. Sitting next to weeping and mourning and dying, laughter. It's not a break from the holy stuff. Laughter's on the holy list. God built the laugh in. Here's what that does to me. If laughter's on the same list as being born and dying and weeping, then laughter's not frivolous. It is built in, it's part of the design. The same God who made a time to mourn made a time to laugh, and never apologized for either one. That means when you bring laughter into a heavy room, you're not betraying the seriousness of the moment, you're honoring a season God Himself put on the calendar. I mean, I've seen this so many times and watched this be true at the hardest times, the funeral. Think of the funerals we've been to. Where someone tells a story about the person who died, and suddenly the whole room is laughing through tears. Somehow it's the most healing thing that can happen all day. It's not disrespect. That's a time to weep, a time to laugh. Happening in the same breath, exactly like the verse said it could. So the courage to laugh in a hard season. I mean, here's the brave part about faith. Takes courage to laugh when you're afraid of laughter might look like you do not care. That's the that's the kind of the scary part. Maybe it makes the maybe if you said it the wrong way, then it comes across weird, but it takes courage to bring joy into a home that has been tense, because joy feels like a risk when everyone's gotten used to walking on eggshells around you. It takes courage to be the one who breaks the heaviness because it lands wrong, and then you feel foolish, and yet the verse gives us permission. It's a time to laugh, it's a time to dance. Even in the same chapter that talks about death, faith is not always a furrowed brow. Sometimes faith is trusting God enough to let joy back into the room. And I believe that joy is a discipline. I've already talked about joy today, but let's keep going. I I'll say it the way I have come to believe it. Joy is not a mood you wait to feel. Joy is a discipline you choose to practice. Joy is just a way of being, and it's fully presence in keeping the promise while equally letting everything be light around us, and not just in the sense of light and brightness, but light with the heaviness of the world. There can be joy in the dark times. And some of the most faithful people I know are not the most solemn. They're the ones who decided that even in a hard season, they would not let the heaviness have the last word. They laugh on purpose, they find the light on purpose, they keep a sense of humor the way other people keep a prayer life because they understand it's part of the same trust. One of my favorite examples of this is President Gordon B. Hinckley of My Church. He was the he was the president in my teen years and twenties. He was a wonderful man. He was in his 80s and 90s. I mean, he was an older guy, and I'll tell you, he had decades of leadership. The congregation in a room of thousands had grown extra hot, and due to an air conditioning issue, something happened. And so most leaders in our church are seen as very serious. But Gordon B. Hinckley, although he could be serious, he had this funny side to him that he let come out when it was necessary. And in the past, no one would have said anything about this warm room. But Hinckley's signature move is humor and communication, telling it like it is. So he made a joke of a tense moment after other speakers had already spoken. He stood up because he was the MC essentially, and he said, We know it's warm in here. We're sorry. You are not nearly as warm as you will be if you don't repent. The crowd went crazy. They burst out laughing. They were all uncomfortable. It was a horrible experience being in this hot room. And yet he made light of what? He implies that, you know, the place known as hell, where the weather's always warm. If you stayed in your own sins and don't repent, yeah, you might be warm for eternity. I mean, you know, it was just a funny man, funny line. It was a great bit. And that takes courage, man, to do that, but that's right in line with what we're talking about. But those who weep, those who mourn, those who are finding challenges, can we find the laughter? The God who made a time to laugh is not nervous about your joy. He invented it. So bring it home. Bring it to the table. Bring it to the people who have only seen your serious face for too long. I hope you'll do that. And I hope you'll enjoy this next segment that we call Father Time right after this. Alright, we go into Father Time with this one. And uh, you know, when I talk about Father Time, in fact, maybe you know this about me. I even made a dry bar comedy special about father time, which is a play on words. Father time is getting older, and father time is also the fact that we're, you know, it we're dads and we're having father time, daddy time. It's fun time. And so um I was thinking of telling you a real story about a spontaneous moment of laughter in my family. Um, this is just uh a time when I needed to make sure that we could get through something really tough. And so we bought a motorhome years ago, and the motorhome has been a great blessing. In fact, we visited all 50 states, we visit 48 of them in the motorhome, and the other, you know, Alaska and Hawaii, we had to fly there. But what's so interesting about the motorhome is that it's become a part of the lexicon of the memory, core memories of my children and our family. And the first motorhome we had was a nice little 32-footer that was a class C. So it was like a truck with an overhang, and and it was very small, but it was still bigger than you know usual for a car. And and then eventually we decided after we took that across the country, visited 20 states probably. We decided to get a bigger one uh because that one had some issue that we needed to get fixed. So I went and bought the class A motorhome that I wanted the whole time that would house the whole family. It had two bathrooms in it, two showers, like really a nice big motorhome. The whole slide comes out, it looks like a big le bus. It's like 38 feet long, it's huge, it's a monster. In fact, it's parked in my driveway right now. And so we bought this back in 17, 2017, I believe. And we bought it right off the showroom floor, brand new. And we did not know that you're not supposed to buy a motorhome brand new. Apparently, the rule is only buy a motorhome with 10,000 miles on it so that the first owner can go through the struggle of having to replace everything that breaks inside of it in the first 10,000 miles. And my friend, that is an actual fact. I we're now at miles 16,000. It has not been without lack of suffering and lack of funny. Because at first I was ticked, you know, like really upset when I would turn and a and a drawer that was supposed to be latched, because that's just what they do when they close, they automatically latch. The drawer would fly open and the silverware would fly everywhere. Like at first, I would get mad about that. Like, oh man, there it goes. You know, eventually, we as a family had so many problems we had to just laugh about it. We would be showering, and then all of a sudden it would go from nice warm to scalding hot and then uh to freezing, and kids were screaming in the shower. And I'd be like, Hey, what are you doing in there? You know, and and so we would just try to make it funny because it was so ridiculous that we know we didn't really have much going right in that thing. Um, eventually, things like uh I remember one time I turned a little bit too sharp, and the three-pane glass that's on one of the shower doors, it came unlatched and it smashed and shattered all over the whole motor. We had to replace that whole thing, and that was we're still finding shards of glass in the corners here and there. I mean, it's a it's been the ultimate adventure. Of you have to eventually just laugh about what's happened. And we went on a trip across the country with that. We were pulling a Jeep I had just purchased, and we were driving with you know 50 feet of glory down the freeway, like as long as an 18-wheeler truck and semi. And I remember uh we were we had done about 20 other states, and we were very happy with how we had hit the states, and yet we'd had a problem in every single place uh on every single part of the trip. And eventually I remember as we're driving down the uh the mountain down this canyon as we're coming home as fast as we could because we're like, we got to get home. This everything's going wrong. The slide-outs weren't working, we're pushing them in. We're every little thing was wrong. Everything's fine now because we got it fixed. But then as I'm driving down this mountain canyon, and there's semis on either side of me, and we're just going down 65 is and I'm I'm getting so close to home. All of a sudden, the fridge flings open when I took this curve. Fridge flings open, everything we had saved in there came flying out spaghetti, pizza, you name it. It was all flying out. And my daughter, Ella, was sitting on the white couch and it just covered her like the worst thing you've ever seen. And she screamed, and everyone was like, Daddy, and I'm like, We're almost up. You know, I'm just I'm just like screaming like, we're gonna make it. And they're like, Daddy, can you pull over? And I'm like, I cannot. Like I couldn't. I was in the middle of these semis, and I just said, Hang on! And then the next thing I knew, we could smell something that was just horrific. And uh it was the apple cider vinegar. We had one glass jar in the entire motorhome, and it was the apple cider vinegar, it came flying off the uh out of the fridge, smashed on the floor to and the and the smell of apple cider vinegar. And so as we're driving, we're just like, Hey God, kids, it's gonna be all right. We're gonna get rid of this thing, and they're like, No, daddy, we love it. And I'm like, I don't know, we'll see. And so I was just making them laugh while we're driving, and some of them were crying, and some of us we were all crying, we were all laughing. We're like, This is the worst thing that's ever happened, and yet it's a memory, it's amazing. I'm so thankful for it because we got through it, and now we can laugh about it. This is different than when they were little and I could just be a raptor and be like and they're like, Daddy, that's awesome, right? Like, that was easy. This was like, how do you be funny and light and still keep their attitudes positive even when you're really frustrated? The motorhome's been that for us. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie RV with Robin Williams. You should look it up. It is so funny, and it's exactly what we've been through in so many ways. And so I share that with the hope that you will do your best to always keep your promise to keep things light and fun with your family, whether it's in the home or in the motor home, to make sure to be that. When was the last time you let yourself be funny at home? I hope that you'll do it more often. Let's go into the funny factory right after this. My own children rate my jokes or bits or routines like restaurant inspectors, my parodies, my songs, the things I create. I'll deliver a line I'm genuinely proud of, and my son will just look at me and be like, that's the one you're gonna go with. You know, we have a good sense of humor between each other because it's like tough crowd, man. I mean, they're free. They live here and they still review me. But here's the thing about dad jokes they're not bad on accident, they're bad on purpose. So a dad joke is a strategic weapon. You deploy it the moment your kids are being too cool for the room. One groan worthy pun. Ah, suddenly the most powerful teenager in the house is rolling their eyes, which, you know, scientifically is the closest thing a teenager comes to saying, I love you. So I asked my kid, like, how do you make a tissue dance? You know, and he's like, uh he refused to answer on principle. And I'm like, You put a little boogie in it, you know. It's like he left the room. That this is this is how this, you know, I knew this one worked. But I remember my sons were starting to ask girls out on dates. You know, they're in middle school, high school, whatever age they were. They they asked me, they're like, Hey, how should we pick up a girl? You know, uh we heard these lines that we need to be real serious, and I was like, No, you have to just be stupid, funny. Like, in my opinion, like I would walk up to a girl and be like, Hey, are you Jamaican? Because Jamaican me crazy, you know, like. Just see if they have a sense of humor to laugh at that, it might work. Like, hey, if you were a sandwich at McDonald's, you'd be McGorgeous. Like just stupid lines I heard through the years. I all this made them realize that it's more about having fun than being serious. The lines are not actual lines. It was the point of saying, have fun with it. Don't take yourself serious, and they'll want you more. And what happened is they made their own funny variation on that. Now they have that sense of humor that's like, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna approach a girl and just have fun with it rather than be so serious that this is life or death. And they essentially, every girl loves them anyway. So there you go. I I mean maybe it's just they're so handsome, I don't know. But aging is just kind of like a nice thing for comedy, and getting older is like a full comedy bit. That's why Father Time, my dry bar comedy special, if you want to look it up, has been very successful. Aging's just your body slowly turning into a sound effect. You know, I used to stand up silently, and now I stand up, my whole body narrates the journey. I bend down to pick up one sock, and and I make a sound, I'm like to try to get a sock on. I have to make a decision while I'm down there. Is there anything else down here I need to do? Because I'm only making this trip once. You know, I last week I pulled a muscle just walking. I mean, I was doing a farmer carry with kettlebells, and I had been walking back and forth and back and forth. I just I just didn't think about stepping properly for one split second and I hyperextend my knee, and I'm like, man, what is happening? Like every single thing you can you can do and hurt yourself just by living your life. You know what? Your body's like, hey, not today. And that's okay. But you know, people know that I do impressions and music in my show, and at home, my musical gift is different. At home, my superpower is making up a song about whatever my family's doing and singing it directly at them until they beg me to stop. You know, things like uh, you left your shoes in the hallway again, you know, like just stuff that they're like, stop, please, it's a ballad, hey. Or uh there's a power anthem called whose cup is this? You know, there's always cups. Why do they have so many cups? I don't know. They need they need every cup, and so I'm I'm constantly singing. My family hates the songs, probably, but they also don't stop quoting them or making essentially doing my signature move, and that's the dream, honestly. They'll deny it forever, but those are songs in her head, kind of like my lady gaga caught in a chicken dance back back. You can find that on YouTube anyway. Forever. You're welcome. That's how it goes. It's gonna be a brain worm, so an earworm for you. So here's a secret: I've learned to be the goofball and the brave part of being the goofball. I've done this for a living. The willingness to be the dorky one is a flex. It takes zero courage to be cool. Cool is just deciding to risk anything. Uh, the brave move is the dad in the grocery store doing the little dance in the serial aisle. Well, his kids pretend not to know him. Hey kids, wanna post this on your TikTok? No, dad. That dad is not embarrassing. That dad is free, and his kids are going to grow up and do the exact same dance to their own mortified children, and circle of joy will continue forever, one serial aisle at a time. Hey kids, I love when my kids are like, Dad, don't do the raptor anymore. You know, we're not kids anymore. It's the best when their friends show up, and I'm like, they're like, hey, I'll say, Hey, did your dad ever do this? Because this embarrasses my son, and I'm like, and they're like, they're looking at their my son. They're like, please don't do that. That's so embarrassing. I'm like, ah, it's fun to embarrass your kids because they're like, I think that's the dad's job. Be the funny one. That's okay. You ready to wrap this up? Let's talk about the fitness minute right after this. Okay, laughter is a workout. Did you know that? Your body believes the laugh. Here's something I love. Your body cannot tell the difference between a joke and a workout, at least at the start. When you laugh, real things happen. The Mayo Clinic says a good laugh enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs, and muscles, and increases the endorphins that are released by your brain. Oxygen, heart, lungs, muscles, endorphins. That's not a mood, that's a physiology. A laugh is a small, free, fully legal dose of the good stuff. So laughter cools the stress response. It gets better. Mayo Clinic explains that a rollicking laugh fires up and then cools down your stress response, raising and then lowering your heart rate and blood pressure, leaving you in a good, relaxed feeling. So laughter is basically a reset button for a stressed-out nervous system. You spend all day with your stress response stuck in the on position. One real belly laugh fires it up, then cools it back down. The way it was designed to work. That's recovery. That is free recovery you can do in your own kitchen just by watching something funny or finding something to laugh about. The long game is this is not just a quick fix. The male clinic says laughter over the long term may improve your immune system. Ease pain by helping the body produce its own natural painkillers and lessen stress, depression, and anxiety. So the funnier version of you is not just braver, the funny version of you is healthier. Joy is doing real work in your body while you're busy thinking it is just goofing off. Now, what I like about what we've just gone over, and let me just find it again. It does say oxygen, heart, lungs, muscle, endorphins. What I love about all of those from the Mayo Clinics that it that it suggests this is that the more you breathe, the more you laugh, the more oxygen you intake, all of that is great. Did you know that every time you sniff, you're igniting nitric oxide in your body, in your blood vessels, and that actually that endorphin that actually goes in as a gas molecule, it all of a sudden ignites in your body this nitric oxide, and then your blood vessels dilate. You feel better because you have blood flow throughout your body, you're laughing, you're you're inhaling all this oxygen. That's all the good stuff, right? Well, that's why I talk about cardiomerical. Cardiomerical is another way to add this type of gas molecule into your body, it's called the miracle molecule by science because cardiomerical ignites the nitric oxide within your body. And so when I talk about cardiomerical, I hope that you understand that not only are they a supporter of this show, but also it's a family business, and I'm very grateful for that. But when you add nitric oxide through cardiomerical into your body, you're going to be able to find that your life is happier, you feel better, you have greater blood flow, greater clarity, your mind will be sharper, your body will feel better, your workouts will be great, your recovery is even better. You can wake up uh at a decent hour, you can go to bed with this as a great drink. All you do is you pour it in your water. It's a very simple thing. I've got some right here in my cup, and I'm I'm so grateful for Cardio Miracle. I hope that you'll check it out. If you want to get a if you want to get it, here's the QR code. Just go to Cardiomiracle.com and I hope that you'll check it out. But the the main reason that I'm talking about it is the fact that we need to figure out ways that we can make our body feel good. That could be through a hearty laugh. That could be through supplementation, that could be through having better vitamin D, which you could get from the sunshine, and or you could get vitamin D3 from Cardio Miracle. It's all good stuff. I hope you'll give it a chance as a 60-day money-back guarantee. We rarely have to refund anyone because everyone loves it so much. I hope you'll check it out. Cardio Miracle, thank you for helping me with this show. Now we're gonna wrap up this show. Let's bring it home. Today was about the laugh you swallowed. That laugh you held back, the one you held back because you thought being serious was the brave thing. It's not. The funniest version of you and the bravest version of you are the same person, and most of us put that person in storage somewhere around the middle of life. We learn that humor is a skill, not a personality quirk. Reading the room, knowing your intention, exercising judgment, trusting the truth to land. We learn that 40 years of research keeps pointing the same way. Laughter builds trust. Cohesion even projects confidence and competence. Remember that an ancient text, sacred lists, made room for a time to laugh right next to time to weep in Ecclesiastes 3:4. We laughed at dad jokes and aging backs. We laughed about my RV trips. We found out a real belly laugh does honest work in your body. So here's the promise for this week: stop swallowing the laugh. Let the funny one out at home. Make up the ridiculous song, do the dance in the serial aisle, tell the true thing wrapped in a smile so the people you love can actually hear it. Be brave enough to be light. Because being delightful in front of the people you already know all your weaknesses is not a smaller kind of courage. It's the realest kind there is. Funniest version of you has been waiting backstage for a long time. Don't save it only for the stage. Don't save it only for the workplace. Bring it home. Tonight, let that person out. I'm Jason Hewlett. This has been the Jason Hewlett Show. I'll see you next Thursday. Until then, keep the promise and have a great night.